The poor guy probably only has paralysis on even numbered days or something, and yesterday was the 15th, ergo no paralysis. But no, you want to write a sensational blog post, so you conveniently choose to omit this one crucial fact. Shame on you.

I had a patient once that was "paralyzed" due to vaccines she received prior to going to Desert Storm. She is now a pole dancer. I guess the first gig didn't work out as well as she was hoping (ie. disability was denied).

A patient walked into the ER once with her mother and claimed she had suddenly gone blind while at home. My father, which was the doctor, asked her "Ok, just look right into this light. Let me check your eye..." she did, she looked right into the light...

Methinks someone is trying to milk disability or worker's compensation!

Or maybe your mere presence lends itself to unexplainable miracles? If the day job as a doctor doesn't work out, then maybe you could explore the possibility of super evangelist, healer of all ills! Ah, but if only you could find a cause for memory loss due to Alzheimer's...

Sounds like the opening scene of the movie "Trading Places," where Eddie Murphy is telling the police, "I ain't got no legs." Then after they pull him up to a standing position he exclaims, "It's a miracle, I have legs." Similar theme.

I liked the split personality theory. But I think we are really missing the point - what cell company does he use? Clearly that signal has special powers...or is he using an Iwalkphone? The marketing possibilities are mind-boggling.

CrazyRXman - it's because if you posted this story on your blog, you'd make several slights about the patient's appearance, and how they have, undoubtedly, a long history of abusing the government, and how people like this are all Obama's fault.

Less is more. And less political opinions is more audience who can appreciate you.

We had a patient who kept coming into the ED over a period of about 3 days saying that he couldn't walk or move his legs and he had pain. He had a normal lumbar CT scam the first ED visit and his neuro exams were always equivocal -the numbness kept moving, the reflexes kept changing, etc. He would be seen crossing his legs while in bed and, of course, everyone thought he was malingering. The thing was, this was a really nice guy who seemed genuinely distressed. Psych couldn't find anything acutely wrong either. Finally, the fourth time he came in, the doc decided to do another CT scan - lumbar and thoracic. He had a bleed (apparently, a slow epidural bleed) at, I believe T10 or a little higher. Poor guy was rushed to surgery, but ended up paraplegic anyway. It was definitely one of my weirdest cases. TCG

Grumpy can not reveal anymore than the generic, and certainly can not relate any information as to what he told him regarding medical treatments. There is a fine line when dealing with privileged communications. Priest/ Penitent, Lawyer/ Guilty Guy, I mean client, Doctor / Patient a fascinating area of legal study. Take an abusing priest who confesses to Bishop..... and you see where I am going with this. Bishop is forbidden from revealing and the rest is a nightmare.

Interestingly enough, people with damage to their visual lobe sometimes experience a phenomenon (sometimes called blindsight) where they are blind, but are able to react to stuff similarly to people with vision. Experiments with such people are fascinating, because such people will insist that they are blind, but will have unerring accuracy when told, "There is a cup in front of you. Pick it up." They tend to get angry when you tell them they have the ability to see (though they are pretty severely impaired), since they are not consciously aware of the stuff they see.

I think possible conversion disorder. Had a patient who had flapping arm movements, couldn't control them. Was in the hospital two weeks. We consulted psych - they said "No, it's not a conversion disorder.. they're really RARE!". She was transferred to the regional tertiary care center. Their "movement disorders" clinic after repeating the complete workup said "Conversion disorder"

Guess that would be called a functional paraplegia. We got those were I work (in a rehab center for para- and tetraplegics)and they're really annoying. Cool thing is, about a third of the patients recover spontaneously after a while.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

Singing Foo!

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